Professor Caroline Homer AO is Deputy Director, Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne and Emeritus Professor of Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney. She holds an NHMRC Investigator Grant.

Caroline is a hospital-trained nurse and midwife who found herself at St George Hospital in Sydney as a research midwife in 1996. More through good luck rather than good planning, and by finding great people to work with at St George and at UTS, she went onto to complete two masters degrees and a PhD and became Clinical Midwifery Consultant at the hospital also working in the birth centre for many years. She was appointed Professor of Midwifery at UTS in 2005. In 2018, she moved to the Burnet Institute in Melbourne as the co-program director of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health.

Caroline has led research and development in midwifery, maternal and newborn health including immunisation and health system strengthening for more than 25 years in Australia and across the Asia-Pacific region. She is the Chair of WHO’s Strategic Technical Advisory Committee for Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition (STAGE). Caroline has been part of WHO guideline panels for many years including the recent postnatal care guidelines.

Saraswathi Vedam is Lead Investigator of the Birth Place Lab at University of British Columbia. Over 40 years, she has been midwife, educator, parent, and researcher. Her work has set international standards for place of birth, person-centred measurement, and equitable access to high quality perinatal services.

She led the community-based participatory studies, Changing Childbirth in BC and the Giving Voice to Mothers Study and the RESPCCT Study, that explore experiences of respect, discrimination, and mistreatment during childbearing care in North America.  These projects led to new quality measures: the My Autonomy in Decision Making (MADM) scale and the Mothers on Respect (MORi) index, and the Mistreatment in Childbirth (MIST) index that assess quality and safety as defined by the service user. These award-winning instruments have been applied in research and quality improvement programs. in 64 countries.

She is PI for the Access and Integration Maternity Care Mapping Study that demonstrates the impact of integration of midwives on perinatal outcomes. Professor Vedam also convened 4 national Birth Summits, and a Global Perinatal Taskforce on Quality and Rights.

Dr Heke is of Waikato Tainui descent and was raised in the mountain environments of New Zealand’s South Island. Over the past 40 years Dr Heke has been a guide in Milford Sound’s World Heritage Park, a mountain bike and ski guide in numerous alpine locations globally and more recently leading groups to experience traditional Māori environmental science.

Dr Heke has post graduate degrees in Environmental Management, educational psychology and a PhD in population health. Dr Heke’s current research focus has been using Systems Dynamics to help Māori and other indigenous groups abroad, build their own health and wellness activities through traditional environmental knowledge. In this capacity, Dr Heke was awarded a research grant by Johns Hopkins University combining Systems Science and Maori Environmental Connections.

Dr Heke also retains teaching positions with Case Western Reserve University and Montana State University. However, Dr Heke’s current role is with Google X’s (San Francisco) generative AI initiative. Dr Heke has also been developing VR180 Māori environmental experiences with a particular interest in high performance sport. More specifically his work has been looking at converting elite athletes into environmental champions by teaching them how to be environmentally centred rather than athlete centred in the ways that they train and evaluate elite performance.

Tina Ngata is a Ngāti Porou mother of two from the East Coast of Te Ika a Māui. Her work focuses on advocacy for environmental, Indigenous, and human rights. This includes involvement in local, national, and international initiatives that highlight the role of settler colonialism in issues such as climate change and waste pollution, while also promoting Indigenous conservation as best practice for a globally sustainable future.

Image courtesy of Michelle Mihi Keita Tibble

Bronwen Pelvin was born in Dunedin and raised in Timaru. Her journey into midwifery began after attending a home birth in 1974 at Hiruharama (Jerusalem) on the Whanganui River. She worked at Palmerston North Hospital before relocating to Nelson in 1978, where she established a domiciliary midwifery practice. This was a formative era for the profession, marked by the founding of the New Zealand College of Midwives and efforts to re-establish midwifery autonomy.

In 1993, Bronwen returned to Timaru to manage the local maternity unit, followed by two years as the first Midwifery Advisor for the New Zealand College of Midwives. After a brief hiatus, she resumed part-time work as a Midwifery Advisor, both for the College and for Nelson Marlborough DHB.

In 2008, she joined the Ministry of Health in Wellington, where she eventually held the role of Principal Advisor Maternity Services.

Alongside her professional career, Bronwen has spent more than 35 years training in psychodrama—a method that supports spontaneity and creativity in working with individuals and groups. This practice has helped her better understand the systems within which she worked and to nurture strong professional relationships.

Since retiring in 2020, Bronwen has returned to Nelson, where she enjoys participating in a poetry group, the Nelson Civic Choir, and a local Repair Café. She lives with her partner Ali, their dog Sophie, and two cats, Eb and Flo.

Providing the Joan Donley Memorial Address

Judith McAra-Couper began her midwifery career at St Helen’s and Middlemore Hospitals in Auckland, New Zealand, before spending six years working in a village in Bangladesh. Since 1998, she has been a midwifery lecturer at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), where she also held a joint appointment at Counties Manukau Health for 12 years as a clinical midwife educator in the delivery unit. Judith completed her PhD in 2007.

In 2009, the World Health Organization in Bangladesh engaged Judith to write a midwifery curriculum and syllabus for nurse midwives. She has since returned to Bangladesh multiple times, employed by UNFPA Bangladesh to support the implementation of this programme. Her work has included curriculum development for direct-entry midwifery and extensive faculty development and education.

Judith was awarded a Post-Doctoral Scholarship in 2010. Her research interests span maternal mental health, sustainability of midwifery practice, preterm birth, and equity in maternity services. She served as Chairperson of the Auckland Region of the New Zealand College of Midwives (NZCOM) from 2008 to 2011, and was appointed to the Midwifery Council of New Zealand in 2010, serving as Chair from 2011 to 2018.

Judith became Head of the Midwifery Department at AUT in 2013, was appointed Associate Professor in 2014, and promoted to Professor in 2020. She is currently the Head of School of Clinical Sciences at AUT. Judith is deeply passionate about midwifery and midwifery education, equity in health outcomes, the good governance of midwifery organisations, and ongoing learning in how to be a better tauiwi Tiriti partner in Aotearoa.